Breakthrough Change Management was founded in 1998 by Kay Burns and John Walsh. They wanted to create an organisation that would work with its clients to manage the crucial “people element” of change.

They find the common approach taken by many is to develop highly effective work processes and systems, but these often leave people struggling to keep up; and these people are generally the very ones whose efforts are most vital to the work processes and systems actually working.

So the objective of Breakthrough Change Management is to make sure that the work processes, systems and people are all in place to ensure that the rationale for any changes is actually achieved

The company’s main offices are strategically located in Stevenage, north of London, from where it is well placed to effectively deal with its national and international client base. In addition, its specialist consultants are based nationwide, providing effective geographical coverage as well as a wide range of specialist skills. It also has an office for continental Europe, based in Geneva, Switzerland.

The right skills for the right job
One of Breakthrough Change Management’s competencies is to provide its clients’ people with the right skills to ensure they excel in their roles. The same approach is used within its own consulting and training teams, using a combination of highly trained generalists and specialists in specific fields.

The company has a core team with a wider network of specialist consultants. This approach enables it to draw on specialist skills to complement the generalist skills of our core consultants.

Our Consultants
The core team based at our UK headquarters is responsible for initial client contact and coordinating the diagnostic and solution-planning element of our process. We also call on specialist consultants at times when additional diagnostic skills are required.

John Walsh
Co-founder and Director of Breakthrough Change Management, John fulfils a number of key roles within the business. He leads both client communications and the diagnostic phase of the Breakthrough Change Management process.

In addition to commercial responsibilities, John also plays a major role in developing and implementing client solutions. His background is in retail, financial services and the automotive sector, having worked in operational roles, consultancy, training and development. As a key consultant within Breakthrough Change Management, John has worked for some of the best-known global brands across three continents on a wide range of change management, customer care, sales training and management development projects.

Kay Burns
Kay is co-founder and Managing Director of Breakthrough Change Management, responsible for both operational and administrative functions within the business. Having over twenty years experience in the automotive and finance sectors, complemented by a number of psychological profiling qualifications, Kay now specialises in the creation and management of assessment centres.

Kay has worked on a wide range of projects. These have included creating from nothing complete human resource management infrastructures for start-ups and overseas corporations locating in the UK, creating and managing assessment centres.

Our Specialist Consultants
Having a wide network of specialist consultants allows us to be able to call on specialist skills and additional people for larger projects. Our specialist consultants often assist in the diagnostic stage and are part of the solution development team; working with clients to develop the solutions the specialist consultant will have a major part in delivering.

All our specialist consultants have a raft of professional training, marketing, sales and management consulting qualifications. Most are NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) trained and many belong to professional bodies.

Eric Baines
As Senior Training and Development Facilitator, Eric has focused on sales training at both strategic levels and the coalface. He has provided sales, negotiation and communication skills training and coaching to mainly blue chip financial services businesses in the UK and internationally.

Leigh Cleaver
Leigh is a Senior Consultant with 18 years experience in sales, marketing, negotiation skills, quality control and organisational behaviour training in the automotive sector. Fluent in Spanish, his career also includes senior operational sales and marketing positions, many overseas, such as South America, so has successfully performed the roles he trains others to do.

Graham Dearing
Graham’s role as Senior Training Facilitator is in sales performance improvement, creating and delivering training programmes that provide negotiation skills, effective selling techniques and understanding the customer’s view. He has also worked on projects assessing management team interaction to improve decision making and “joined-up” management.

Sarah Frossell
With hands-on public sector management experience within education, Sarah has worked for twelve years as a trainer, facilitator and coach for major public and private sector clients. She works on a variety of coaching and training related projects, including change management, promoting teamwork and leadership skills, as well as personal development coaching.

Andy Granston
Andy has spent most of his career in the retail sector, having fulfilled both operational management and training roles. He specialises in customer service training, management development and leadership skills training. Andy has spent time employed by major household retail chains and his consulting and training clients have a similar retail chain profile. He also has extensive experience working within the public sector.

Duncan Heath
With a blend of HR skills, training and coaching experience, Duncan’s projects have often crossed disciplinary boundaries. He has prepared and delivered training programmes in sales, negotiation, presentation and communication skills, created tailored management development courses and developed job descriptions and performance programmes. Duncan’s clients are equally varied, coming from the print and media, automotive, SME, IT and leisure sectors.

Catherine Hoar
Catherine works with both public and private sector clients to develop programmes in creativity, sales and communication, time management, negotiation and communication. She has worked extensively to produce and maintain the peak performance of teams. Client organisations have included: major pharmaceutical companies, assisting with innovation and creativity management; housing associations, for senior management development programmes; and training modules for chartered institutes like the CIPD (the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development).

Vanessa Naldrett
Early career experience employed by a major food retailer gave Vanessa both strong human resource management and management development training skills. With additional qualifications in psychometric testing and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), she has developed these into a formidable set of training and change management skills for her retail and telecoms clients.

John Nicholson
Many years of practical operational experience within the secondary finance sector makes John’s style of training really relevant to delegates on his courses. John’s core skills lie in sales training, customer service training, facilitating high performing teams and leadership, as well as management development.

David Upsher
As a published author of The Complete Sales Guide, David’s focus is on sales skills training, sales management training and development programmes, including personal motivation. Having worked with every major global auto manufacturer, his experience of generating and implementing training and change programmes that achieve results is considerable.

Ron Wells
Ron is a qualified barrister specialising in employment law, employee relations and human resource management. He has worked in academia running management and professional development courses. Ron’s private sector clients have included major brands in telecoms, electronics engineering and leisure.